Read Science!

Anyone who follows me on social media knows of my predilection for popular science books (as well as other non-fiction and fiction, too!)

By my count, I read (or listened to) well over 75 books in 2016, including finally (FINALLY) reading and enjoying the science fiction classic Read Player One. What follows is a list of some of the favorites of the science variety I’ve read this year with a brief comment or two, and including a link to any Read Science! episode that would have been held with the author(s).

This list is not meant to show all non-fiction science books that were published in 2016. Naturally, as any other bibliophile would, I have a large stack remaining to be tackled.

Lab Girl by Hope Jahren. Hope graciously agreed to be on and episode of Read Science! (watch here) this year (wherein, amusingly, her office lights automatically turn off periodically as an energy saving measure). Her book is by far the most unique book I’ve read in the science non-fiction genre and in our interview she states how she set out to write something completely different. She alternates moving memoir-style chapters of her life/life-in-science alternating with transcendent and informative writing about plants. I loved it so much that after I read it, I also listened to it because she was the narrator, and since it was her story, it was a marvelous experience. Her book now joins my favorite science books of all time, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot and The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee.

Eccentric Orbits: The Iridium Story by John Bloom. This book caught my eye this summer because it was ‘An Amazon Best Book of the Year So Far (Business & Investing)’ and the WSJ also recommended it, so I straight out purchased it. While I’m not completely averse to business style books, they certainly wouldn’t be my first choice. However, this book promised rockets, science and technology, so I took a chance. I hadn’t closely followed the Iridium satellite events in the news during the years they were happening as I was raising my four young kids, so the book was essentially a refresher course. Bloom’s telling of the circumstances contained a plethora of players and numerous business and legal dealings which might have lost me in less deft storytelling hands, but I found myself enthralled by how he managed to weave the information together and bring the reader along so well without losing us in the midst of it all.

The Gene: An Intimate History by Siddhartha Mukherjee. In case it has not been made clear from tweets and during occasional Read Science! episode exclamations, Dr. Mukherjee’s first book, The Emperor of All Maladies is practically my favorite book of all time. When I finished reading it, I mourned the end of the book for several days because I had immersed myself into it so completely. Anyone who reads knows this feeling all to well.

Was it possible I held my breath waiting six years for another masterpiece from Dr. Mukherjee? Well, of course not, because breathing is important. But, as a cell biologist teaching at a major research university, and teaching genomics nonetheless, I was excited to hear of his newest book, and curious to see how he approached a topic I am quite familiar with. It covers the history of discovery across the entire field of DNA, genetics and genomics, and does it very well interspersed with a personal story of the genetics in his own family. It was a delight to read, and at over 600 pages, one would think he touched on all aspects of ‘the gene’, but since it is such an expansive and expanding field, inevitably some details are missing. I recommend following up with Kat Arney’s Herding Hemingway’s Cats (below) for some of the newest findings in genetics/genomics.

Rise of the Rocket Girls: The Women Who Propelled Us, From Missiles to the Moon to Mars by Nathalia Holt. This book was a revelation to me as the fact that women did the calculations to help us double check the work of physicists and engineers who were creating rockets and missiles. Her book focuses on the ladies in California and the area that eventually became NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab. Her book predates the much talked about Hidden Figures.

I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life by Ed Yong. Ed’s work as a biology writer is top notch, as many of you may know from his work at The Atlantic, and previously at Discover. As he reveals to us in his appearance on Read Science! (watch here) he wasn’t really planning on writing a book, but the topic of the microbiome inspired him to create this important, informative and inimitable work, replete with the humor he is known for in his other writings (including tweets).

How to Survive a Plague: The Inside Story of How Citizens and Science Tamed AIDS by David France. Read Science! guest Steve Silberman (Neurotribes watch here) had tweeted about this book and the topic intrigued me. The storytelling in the book captivated and informed me to a level I’d not been before on the topic. All in all, I learned that activism works to further scientific research. I loved this book. One of my top faves in 2016.

Eight more of Joanne’s favorite Science Books from 2016

Moving on to the next 8 books among my favorites for 2016, I’m going to speed things along. Five of the eight listed above were Read Science guests so be sure to check out the episode if you are interested.

Venomous: How Earth’s Deadliest Creatures Mastered Biochemistry by Christie Wilcox. You may know Christie from twitter (@NerdyChristie) and by her blog, Science Sushi. I really enjoyed her book, maybe moreso because I’m a cell biologist and since cells do biochemistry really well, I could appreciate her approach to explaining how toxins are produced in the animals that use them as defense and as the weapon in the unfortunate victim. She was a wonderful guest on Read Science! (watch here)

The Confidence Game: Why We Fall for It….Every Time by Maria Konnikova. A very interesting and practical book. If you or a loved one has ever fallen for a con (and really, who hasn’t?), you will find the stories and science in the book riveting. Maria kindly was a guest on Read Science! (vide0).

Breaking the Chains of Gravity: The Story of Spaceflight before NASA by Amy Shira Teitel. Amy is a prolific creator of fun spaceflight history videos and now a podcast. Her book came out in January but it took us a while to schedule her appearance on Read Science! (watch here). He book tells the story of rocket testing and the steps it took to get into space before NASA had their opportunity. It was a very interesting book.

Herding Hemingway’s Cats: Understanding How Our Genes Work by Kat Arney. I know a lot about the science of genomics and genetics but learned a few new things by reading her book, as I pointed out in her appearance on Read Science! (watch here). Nearly every book on genes starts with Gregor Mendel, but she didn’t and for that, I give her a high five. (Don’t worry, it’s still in the book!). Reading the book is like having a good friend explain the latest science in a very friendly and clear manner.

With this episode we celebrated several firsts: our biggest hangout to date (all 6 of us in one little video), our first return guest (Suzi), and our first guest joining us from Africa (Laurie, from her office at the Cheetah Conservation Fund, in Namibia). To celebrate we had a very stimulating conversation about extinction and animal conservation, featuring the passenger pigeon and the cheetah.

In this episode we talked with Corey S. Powell, editor of the book “Undeniable : Evolution and the Science of Creation”, by Bill Nye, former editor-in-chief of “American Scientist” and “Discover” magazines, and author of the Discover blog “Out There”.

As usual, our conversation was wide ranging, from debating with creationists to GMOs, science journalism to the human need for exploration. And this was where we first learned that Bill Nye was visiting Monsanto to learn more about GMOs and they will be editing that controversial chapter. This link will take you straight to that part of the conversation.

Saturday, January 24 from noon to 4pm (in YOUR timezone) is time set aside to sit down and read for the National Read-a-thon Day as sponsored by the National Book Foundation whose mission is to expand the audience for literature in America.

At Read Science! Jeff and I want to encourage you to take some time to read a book of your choice that day in a show of support for literacy. You don’t have to read science, as any reading is great for the mind. However, if you want to read some science, you can certainly look to us to help you make some great choices. Connect with us on Facebook if you want to start a discussion about books!

For this episode, we not only Read Science, we Make Science! Our guest was Liz Heinecke, the Kitchen Pantry Scientist and author of “Kitchen Science Lab for Kids”. We talked about engaging kids and their parents with science through hands-on science fun in the kitchen–and outdoors, for the messier experiments.

Today we had a lively discussion with Lynn Sherr about her outstanding biography, “Sally Ride : America’s First Woman in Space”. We talked quite a bit about the sexist barriers that Sally (and Lynn Sherr, herself) help to break down in the early 1980s, listened to stories, and tried to understand what a different time it was when Sally joined NASA in 1978, and what a different place the USA was back then.

Marketing and public relations aren’t our usual subjects on “Read Science!”, but today they very much WERE rocket science, when we talked about the new book “Marketing the Moon : The Selling of the Apollo Lunar Program”, with its authors, David Meerman Scott and Richard Jurek.More

Joanne and Jeff had a lively discussion centered on what dogs, bunnies, and squirrels have to do with general relativity and quantum mechanics, with our guest Chad Orzel, author of “How to Teach Physics to Your Dog” and “How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog”.

Zoonoses, or infectious diseases that can pass from animals to humans, are commonplace and a danger to public health; the list of zoonotic diseases includes Ebola, influenza, SARS, MARS, HIV to name only a few.

They are also the subject of David Quammen’s book “Spillover : Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic”, and the series of short videos produced by The Weather Channel, called “The Virus Hunters”.More